declared that "It is the duty of Government to protect our persons and our property from danger. The gross ignorance of the common people is a principal cause of danger to our persons and property. Therefore it is the duty of the Government to take care that the common people shall not be grossly ignorant."[[228]] This is more in the temper of Wilberforce than in that of Tom Paine. But whatever their motives, the services of the Whigs were great. Their grant was absurdly inadequate. But they had at least begun to enable the common people to think for themselves, and if they had not prevented the disputes of sects, they had at least secured that no sect should have an artificial advantage over another.
The great Whig administration went out of office in 1841. Their foreign policy was the policy of Palmerston, and is perhaps best treated in connection with his conduct of affairs after 1846, when his party returned to power for an almost continuous period of twenty years. Lord Grey retired in 1834, and was succeeded by Lord Melbourne, an easy gentleman, whose only claim to the gratitude of posterity was his careful training of the young Queen Victoria. Under his guidance the country was little troubled by legislation, and the closing years of the Ministry were marked by no important domestic achievement. But the establishment of a new Constitution in Canada marked the beginning of a new and Liberal colonial policy. This was the work of Lord Durham, who had outrun all his colleagues at the time of the Reform Bill, and earned for himself the name of "Radical Jack." He received little support from the Home Government during his service in Canada, and all the credit which it deserves is his alone.[[229]]
Since the loss of the American Colonies, Canada was the only considerable colony of white men which England possessed. Australia and New Zealand were comparatively recent
discoveries, and South Africa, captured from the Dutch during the great war, was only sparsely populated. Canada represented a civilization of an older type, and a large portion of its inhabitants was French. In 1791 a Constitution had created two Provinces, Upper and Lower Canada, which corresponded roughly with the distribution of the two nationalities. The arrangement was satisfactory to nobody. Upper Canada was dominated by an oligarchy which monopolized public offices, and had acquired the bulk of the public land for its own use. The Governor and his Executive Council habitually rejected the advice of his elected Legislature, and the Province was in practice governed by officials. In Lower Canada the elected House was chiefly French, and the Governor, packing the Upper House with English, managed his Province much as England had managed Ireland. The real Government of both Provinces was in fact the Colonial Office. Parliament generally was indifferent. Many of the Radicals, following Bentham, accepted in full the theory that local affairs must be controlled by local representative assemblies. But they pushed their theory to logical conclusions, and, believing that the complete independence of the Provinces must come, sooner or later, were little inclined to administer the affairs of territories which were only costly burdens upon the British taxpayer. The Whigs, misreading the lesson of the American Rebellion, saw no alternatives but this complete independence and the present difficult and irritating subjection. In this atmosphere the officials had their own way. Bickerings about domestic affairs continued from 1810 to 1837. The Lower Province wanted an elected Upper House and power to dispose of the Crown Lands. The Upper Province wanted responsibility of Ministers and no oligarchy. Commissioners were sent to Canada in 1836 to inquire into complaints, and at once came to grief. In March, 1837, the English House of Commons, in spite of Radical opposition, resolved that it was inexpedient to make the Upper House of Lower Canada elective. In August the Assembly of the Province was dissolved, and rioting began. Troops were called in, and Canadians were
killed. In May, 1838, Durham arrived at Quebec on an errand of pacification. Some of his acts were arbitrary, and he was at last forced to resign by a torrent of abuse, which the Home Government did nothing to avert. But his policy was in effect adopted, and his Report contains the statement of the principles which have ever since been the foundation of our colonial system.[[230]]
The reforms were not until a later date completed by the consolidation of the two Provinces, which directed the energies of the two races into the management of their common affairs, and so ended the discord which had nearly ruined Lower Canada. But both Provinces were separately endowed with responsible government. Full control was given over revenue, Ministers were made responsible to the Legislature, and the nominated Houses were abolished. "Hitherto," said Durham, "the course of policy adopted by the English Government towards the colony has had reference to the state of parties in England, instead of the wants and circumstances of the Province." In future, other principles were to prevail, and the first step was to equip the colony with the machinery for managing its own business. "I do not anticipate that a Colonial Legislature, thus strong and thus self-governing, would desire to abandon the connection with great Britain. On the contrary, I believe that the practical relief from undue interference, which would be the result of such a change, would strengthen the present bond of feelings and interests; and that the connection would only become more durable and advantageous, by having more of equality, of freedom, and of local independence. But at any rate, our first duty is to secure the well-being of our colonial countrymen; and if in the hidden decrees of that wisdom by which this world is ruled, it is written that these countries are not for ever to remain portions of the Empire, we owe it to our honour to take good care that, when they separate from us, they should not be the only countries on the American continent in which the Anglo-Saxon race shall be found unfit to govern itself.
"I am, in truth, so far from believing that the increased power
and weight that would be given to these Colonies by union would endanger their connection with the Empire, that I look to it as the only means of fostering such a national feeling throughout them as would effectually counterbalance whatever tendencies may now exist towards separation. No large community of free and intelligent men will long feel contented with a political system which places them, because it places their country, in a position of inferiority to their neighbours." The object of the reforms was to give as much freedom to the colonists as was compatible with the sovereignty of the Crown. They would then lose two temptations to rebellion; the interference of foreign officials in the disputes of their own parties, and the contrast which the liberty of Americans as well as of English presented to their own condition. Some points were left open, and were not settled until a later date. But Parliament had at last been brought to recognize that "Englishmen abroad are the same animals as Englishmen at home—energetic, self-relying, capable of managing their own affairs, impatient of needless and domineering interference."[[231]] The egoistic habit had received a decisive check.
The total contribution of the Whigs to Liberalism was very large. They had declared that government, national and local, was to be no longer the business of a class, but the interest of the people as a whole; that no form of religious opinion was to be appreciated at the expense of another; that no man should be allowed to have property in the body of another; that land should not be privileged against goods in relation to legal debts, and that landowners should not be privileged against landless men in relation to the killing of game; that employers and parents should not be allowed to dispose of the health and happiness of children; that the English people should not be permitted to regulate the domestic concerns of one of their colonies. Much remained to be done. The middle class was admitted to political power, but the working class was not. Catholics and Dissenters were no longer practically disabled by the Church, but both were still depreciated by the establishment of the rival sect, and the Jew
was still excluded from Parliament and office by the Christian. Land was still privileged by the Corn Law as against industry, and particular industries as against the public by the protective tariff. The poor working man was still liable to be abused by his wealthy employer. If the Colonies were emancipated, Ireland was not. The condition of women had not been improved, or even considered. Some of these reforms were simply applications of old Whig theories about the responsibility of Government to the people and the toleration of heterodox opinions. A Whig of 1688 would have understood the ideas which lay beneath the Reform Act, the Canadian Constitution, the repeal of the Test Act, and Catholic Emancipation, even if he had disliked the particular expression of them. Other reforms were novel not only in themselves, but also as implying a new attitude of mind, a new conception of the relations between the State and society. The education scheme and the Factory Act meant that men were ceasing to look upon the State as something external to the people, a thing which was contrived simply to protect individual human beings from being injured either by foreign invaders or by domestic law-breakers. They were beginning to look upon it as an engine which might be put to positive as well as to negative use, which might be employed to strike off fetters as well as to prevent their imposition, which might be consciously directed towards improving a man's natural capacity as well as towards allowing it free play. It was a long time before these ideas received much fuller expression. Political power remained in the hands of classes who required little assistance of this sort for themselves, and were incapable of seeing how urgently it was needed by others. Until the Reform Act of 1867 had transferred power to the working classes the new conception of the State was only rarely and unsystematically expressed in legislation. In the meantime the landed gentry and the manufacturers exaggerated rather than diminished the old idea of individualism, and neglected or resisted every proposal which tended to restrict competition.